Omer Meir Wellber

The director, Roland Schwab, has created his version of Hell. The set is like a high iron walled hanger and the stage is continually occupied with people who look like fugitives from Mad Max and who interact with Mefistofele. The orchestra and choir are wonderful. Rene Pape gives a nuanced interpretation with a certain amount of sardonic humour under the evil. His singing and acting are first rate, as is that of Kristine Opolais and Joseph Calleja.

Vincenzo Bellini wrote two tragic operas for Teatro La Fenice: I Capuleti e i Montecchi and Beatrice di Tenda. The first, composed in 1830 and to the story of Romeo and Juliet but not based on Shakespeare but rather on an early nineteenth-century tragedy by Luigi Scevola in a new production by Arnaud Bernard (direction), Alessandro Camera (sets) and Maria Carla Ricotti (costumes), co-produced with Fondazione Arena di Verona (where it was presented at the Teatro Filarmonico in November 2013) and with the Greek National Opera of Athens. The cast includes Jessica Pratt and Mihaela Marcu as Giulietta; Sonia Ganassi and Paola Gardina as Romeo; Shalva Mukeria and Francesco Marsiglia as Tebaldo; Rubén Amoretti as Capellio; and Luca Dall’Amico as Lorenzo, conducted by Omer Meir Wellber.

In Trelinski's timeless production he leads a superb, first-class young cast headed by Artur Ruzinski as Onegin and Kristīne Opolais as Tatyana. Mariusz Trelinski, Polish filmmaker and theater director, has created a series of dream-like, surrealist tableaux of great suggestive beauty.